45 pages • 1 hour read
Megan Whalen TurnerThe Thief
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
Hamiathes’s Gift
Hamiathes’s Gift is the main magical element of The Thief and the object around which the story and character motivations rotate. The stone is of greatest importance to Gen, the magus, and Ambiades, and it represents something different for each of them. To Gen, Hamiathes’s Gift is both a goal and a way to prove himself. Selection of the future queen of Eddis relies on him retrieving the stone, which he does because it benefits his country. Moreover, the challenge of retrieving the stone and successfully delivering it to Eddis is a personal quest and test of Gen’s skills. Hamiathes’s Gift is one of the most well-guarded secrets and artifacts of the old gods, and the opportunity to steal it from its hiding place offers him the chance to do something never before recorded in history, a chance Gen’s ego won’t let him pass up. Even after he finds the stone in the maze, Gen then must steal it from the magus and from the Attolians, meaning that Gen has not only stolen it from the gods but also from two enemy nations, a feat that solidifies his confidence in his abilities and status as a master thief.
For both the magus and Ambiades, Hamiathes’s Gift represents a positive change in their situation. The magus seeks the stone so Sounis may secure an alliance with Eddis, which would both bolster Sounis in a confrontation against Attolia and open up the trade route between Sounis and Attolia that Eddis fiercely guards. Like Gen, the magus also wants the stone for personal bragging rights, but where Gen would celebrate his skills, the magus would use the stone to gain notoriety that he hasn’t earned. This is one of the key differences between Gen and the magus. Gen wants to know he accomplished the tasks about which he brags, where the magus is content to take credit where it is not due. For Ambiades, the stone is his ticket out of the poverty that has been forced on him. By allying with Attolia, Ambiades seeks to hand over the stone in exchange for the wealth and status he lost through his father’s gambling and the tarnishing of his family’s reputation. Ambiades doesn’t care what political ramifications will result from delivering the stone to Attolia, showing his arrogance. With enough money and status, he believes he can weather whatever changes come.
The Gods
The gods, specifically the old gods, play an important role throughout The Thief. Together, the old and new gods show the complexities of religion and of having multiple pantheons among neighboring nations. Religious beliefs are a subject of contention, and they influence how citizens of Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia view the people of other nations. In Sounis and Attolia, worshipping the new gods is believed to be a sign of forward thinking and modern living, but in Eddis, staying loyal to the old gods is a mark of honor that gets them branded as out-of-touch by Sounis and Attolia. Together, the religious choices of each nation and the effect this has on the relationship between the three shows how religion and politics are intertwined, even when they are not meant to be.
As an Eddisian, Gen believes in the old gods and, specifically, the tales he grew up hearing. In this way, Gen’s character embodies how Loyalty Is a Relationship because he cannot be swayed from his beliefs. The tales of the old gods that Gen and the magus tell during their journey show the importance of storytelling and the oral tradition of keeping culture and religion alive. The differences in the stories Gen and the magus know shows how details are lost to time and the encroachment of new ideas. Eddisians never gave up worshipping the old gods and have kept more meticulous records of their tales. In Sounis, the magus has cobbled together tales of the old gods based on research, meaning that his stories are not in their purest form and that they may be missing details that the Eddisians have not forgotten. The differences in the stories also show how tales evolve over time. Gen may have versions of the stories that are more accurate to the originals, but the magus’s offer new perspectives and nuances that Gen has not considered.
Food
Food is a key part of the journey and of Gen’s personality. The first few chapters of the journey are told in terms of how long the group traveled in a day and when they stopped to eat. Many of these stops are influenced by Gen complaining that he’s hungry, and he uses this to get his way because he knows the magus can’t retrieve the stone without him. For Gen, food becomes a tool he can use to assert power in a situation where he is otherwise powerless. Gen also lords his status over Ambiades and Sophos by using food. He frequently suggests that he should get a portion of food meant for one of the apprentices because he is more important to the mission than either of them. This infuriates Ambiades, who refuses to acknowledge that a thief might be better than him, and it informs the worsening relationship between Gen and Ambiades. In Chapter 7, Ambiades uses food against Gen by making it look as if Gen stole it from the rations pack. By doing so, Ambiades arrests the little power Gen managed to gain via food and turns Gen’s tool against him.
Much of the landscape the group travels across is full of farmland, specifically olive trees. Historically, olive trees have been markers of peace, spawning the idiom of offering an olive branch to end a confrontation. In the frame of the story world, it is both meaningful and ironic that the group passes several fields of olive trees. One of the main reasons for retrieving Hamiathes’s Gift is to secure an alliance between Sounis and Eddis, and in this way, the olives represent the peace they are associated with. Retrieving the stone is also a preemptive act of aggression against potential attacks from Attolia, which makes the trees’ symbol of peace ironic. Near the Attolian border, there are several fields of trees that have been left untreated because the country lacks the population to tend to them. This symbolizes the tensions between Attolia and the other countries and foreshadows the confrontations that arise around Attolia in the rest of the series.
